Closed-loop liquid CPU cooling solutions are gaining popularity as more and more vendors are carrying their own variation. We've even seen both Intel and AMD announce the inclusion of liquid-coolers for their upcoming processor lines. Today we're going to take a look at the Corsair Hydro Series H60 High Performance, H80 High Performance, and H100 Extreme Performance liquid CPU coolers. Corsair has teamed up with CoolIT Systems this time around. They have previously partnered with Asetek for other Hydro Series products (H40/H50/H70/H70 Core), but our focus here is on the H60, H80, and H100.

The Corsair Hydro Series of liquid CPU coolers aim to give you the power of liquid-cooling in a compact, easy to install package, without the complexity of traditional water-cooling kits. They are designed to be a closed-loop solution with no maintenance required at all. But just how well do these Corsair liquid-coolers perform against the current cream of the crop air-coolers? After all, Corsair is targeting the high-end air-cooling market with these cooling solutions, both in price and performance. First, let's take a look at the specs for the units being tested today.

Most air coolers do a very fine job these days, what I'd like to see is a water cooler for GPUs because the stock or third party models at the moment are poor. If you want low noise, none of them do a good job.

I wish someone would have told me how friggen loud this thing was. OMG I couldn’t stand it anymore. I just finished replacing the Stock Corsair fans with 2 Noctua NF-P12's. What a HUGE difference!!! My system is super quiet now..... After spending over $100 and now I need to spend another $20 buck is not cool in my book!Reply

Thanks was a useful article. But would be much better if it considered the newer x79 systems.1. The newer i7-3960, 3930 chips have a thermal output of 130W. This is way higher than many SB OC systems. And only gets worse if you OC it. So it would be useful to see what Coolers can handle that kind of thermal load.2. The LGA2011 die size is larger, so handy to know which coolers can fit over its surface efficiently.3. It would be useful to know which coolers actually have sufficient clearance to function without compromising the use of your system. ie You can still populate all 8 RAM slots & actually use the 1st PCI slot. Eg: Can Corsair style 52mm high RAM fit? Do you need to drop to 40mm G.Skill sized RAM or are you unable to use the 1st RAM slot at all. Similarly the 1st PCI slot is often designed to run fastest. With the other slots share the bandwidth if you populate with more cards. While I suspect most of the popular Air Coolers (ie: ThermalRight, Noctua) will not fit correctly, which may force you to choose a Water Cooled system.It would be really useful to know the facts. Reply

Hi folks. Just last week I attempted to mount a new Corsair H100 in a new Rosewill Blackhawk Mid-Tower, and no matter how I tried to manipulate things, I just couldn't get them to mate... And while my configuration is just that, mine, I believe the generalities that I am about to write about may help others understand more about the H100, and case/motherboard compatibility issues that you may need to consider.

So, for accessibility, I first removed the top of the Blackhawk case, and then removed its preinstalled 140mm fan. (BTW, I had premeasured everything beforehand, and I knew that there was probably going to be a problem, but tried fitting it in anyways...) I then mounted the H100 radiator inside the case, without its two fans, on the very top of the case, where the 140mm fan use to be. Using the hardware provided by Corsair, I loosely screwed in the 8 screws. DING, FIRST PROBLEM: Fortunately, I had seen that the Corsair screws appeared too long, and that if I were to have torqued them down securely, all 8 screws would have definitely damaged the H100 radiator fins (though not the actual piping with the coolant, as best as I could tell, but why chance it?), so be forewarned about this.

I then loosely mounted my new, unpopulated, Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 LGA1155 onto the provided stand-offs, and DING, SECOND PROBLEM: The hardware provided by Rosewill to mount the Mobo to the standoffs is the type that have raised ribs on the underside of the screwhead, used to "dig into" the solder on your Mobo, and the copper tracing! A Newegg reviewer had pointed this out, so I was aware of the issue, but if you torqued these screws down securely onto your Mobo, you will damage the copper tracing, so go out and get yourself some better quality hardware, without ribs, if you want to save your Mobo. You'll get the same connectivity, without damaging the mobo.

So, now the real fun began, as I tried to ever so carefully attach each of the H100 fans to the underside of the H100 radiator. I was just barely able to physically mount the first fan, the rearmost, to the underside of the radiator (Corsair provides the hardware for doing this), but DING, THIRD PROBLEM: the fan (not the radiator) physically blocked my Gigabyte Mobo's SYS Fan1 connector. While this in itself can obviously be worked around, DING, PROBLEM FOUR: I couldn't even physically mount the forward H100 fan to the H100 radiator because all four of the upper DDR3 1-4 memory socket retaining clips were in the way, in a big way! In addition, even if I was able to mount the H100 fan, it would have completely blocked my Mobo CPU FAN connector, much like the rear fan had blocked the SYS Fan1 connector.

Now, remember, my Mobo was unpopulated at the time, and the memory sockets were empty, so even if your particular case/mobo combo could provide sufficient space for the H100 fan, you still have to remember to consider that your memory may have cooling fins attached to it, which may prevent you from attaching the forward fan. Just a consideration.

Other thoughts. My new Blackhawk Case was damaged on arrival, so it was RMA'd and I'm awaiting its replacement. I reaally liked the Blawkhawk case, so I am now considering using a Corsair H80 cooling system, versus the H100, and mounting the H80 where the Blackhawks rear 120mm fan comes pre-installed. That, or I'm considering mounting just the H100 radiator inside of the Blawkhawk case, at the very top (per the above install that I had problems with), and then mounting the two H100 fans on the outside top of the Blawkhawk case, directly above the H100 radiator, and on top of the Blawkhawks upper case mesh. My concerns with this arrangement obviously are how this setup might alter the H100's cooling potential.

I hope some of this info helps those of you who are considering getting a non-stock cooling system, be it water or air.

in this case picture the inner radiator fan is mounted in the wrong direction, it is blowing the heat from the radiator into the case, you need to switch the fan direction around (and possibly do the review over again).

Hi everyone bought﻿ my H100 today and if you want to do a push pull configuration,you need more screws.The screws come as a english thread 6/32 unc x 1 1/4 Long.Which ain't easy to get hold of.There are quite a few complaints that the screws are too long crushing the fins on the radiator.I have a solution for you.I worked for a fastening company so I know this works.I used M3x30mm Steel Button Head Screws with washers as the thread pitch are nearly the same as each other.Excellent fit as the screws are 2mm shorter than the others.Reply